It's a stretch but if he really was a wreck defensively you'd expect him to have a worse +/- as well. I know its a team stat but again, if he was so bad, why would he have one of the best +/- on the team?

Cause he wasn't in the lineup most of our awful stretch.

Cause it's so small of a sample size

Cause plus/minus can drastically differ from year to year

Cause he didn't play against top competition

Cause he didn't have significant TOI (most of our worse plus-minus players like Kessel, Phaneuf, Gunnarson were also our biggest ice time leaders)